Crisis as an Opportunity by Edwards Richard;Mirsky Julia;Kaufman Roni;Avgar Amos;

Author:Edwards, Richard;Mirsky, Julia;Kaufman, Roni;Avgar, Amos;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4459516
Publisher: UPA

In the same book, Frankl discusses human pain and likens it to gas in a chamber. No matter how much or how little there is, it expands to the fill the available boundaries. Thus, each person experiences his or her pain personally, and regardless of the extent of the loss, the pain is significant.

In New Orleans, there are many levels of loss, beginning with the staggering loss of life. Some lost their homes and possessions; some have rebuilt, some have torn their houses down, and some have elevated them as high as 12 feet above ground. Others have sold their gutted homes at a substantial economic loss. Still others experience survival guilt because they and their homes were spared. But, as Frankl said, pain, regardless of its nature, expands to fill the available space.

I contend that everyone has lost something because everyone has lost part of their community as they knew it. The lessons of this disaster are still surfacing, and they are both professional and personal.

What have I learned in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina? Among many things:

How to say thank you from the bottom of my heart like I’ve never done before.

How trauma burns a new neural pathway in the brain—a very well-lubricated brain.

How it feels like to share a deep “trauma bond” with 500,000 people.

How adversity does not so much build character as reveal it.

How important humor and laughing are, sometimes at ourselves. I was in a French Quarter nightclub a few months after the storm and heard a musician, taking a break between songs, blurt out: “We’re all trying here in New Orleans to get back to abnormal.” And once, when driving through one of our devastated neighborhoods, I came across a house that floated off its foundation and came to rest across the street. It was spray-painted with the phrase “Wicked witch of the east was here.”

That a small electric motor submerged under six feet of water for two weeks, if not plugged in while under water, will still work . . . at least until you burn it up whacking overgrown weeds in your neighbors’ abandoned properties.

That when I sweat so much that the earphones to my player don’t work, it’s time to take a break.

About the tenuousness of the boundaries that define a civil society fractured by fear.

About hope and resilience and how they work together to support healing.

How buffering mechanisms, like suspending one’s need for comfort and order, can help one cope.

How we, as people, can never afford to be separate, and how we must not be now.

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